In April and May 2009 channel Seven’s Sunday Night programme looked at the activities of The Australian Vaccination Network.
Following the first programme – A Mother’s Choice – the producers held a live audience forum entitled Fear and Confusion.
Both episodes are below, with a final credit scroll examining the activity of anti-vaccine GP, Giselle Cooke, which led to a NSW Medical Tribunal hearing.
The vaccination effort against Hepatitis B, especially to protect newborns, will not stop
– Dr Yang Wei Zhong, Deputy Director General of the China CDC –
Australians are unfamiliar with the impact of large scale infection from Hepatitis B virus [HBV].
Ways of controlling the spread of infection include vaccination of health care workers against HBV, that infection with HBV is a notifiable disease, the quarantine of patients suspected of having HBV, ongoing quarantine procedures for patients diagnosed with HBV, extensive education and follow up of patients upon discharge and Harm Reduction initiatives.
So successful have these measures been that many Aussies erroneously believe HBV is exclusively a problem for high risk demographics such as IV drug users or sex workers. This misconception itself is as dangerous as high risk behaviour because it leads to the belief that protection from infection is linked to how one identifies oneself.
Indeed, IV drug users and sex workers are often highly educated about the risk of HBV infection and implement safe injecting and safe sex practices. Many seek out or are offered the HBV vaccine by their own or any GP. The fact is everyone is susceptible to infection with HBV or any blood borne virus.
Tragically the antivaccination lobby has done much to mislead some Aussies into what could almost be termed lethal complacency. By both dehumanising high risk demographics and falsely linking the HBV vaccine to injury and death, they have propagated ignorance and fear, condemning many to premature death from liver failure. In some cases the virus will be cleared over time, but there is no way to manufacture this outcome.
HBV positive individuals who would not exist but for antivaccination propaganda, can transmit the virus for many years post infection, completely free of symptoms.
HBV may be the cause of up to 80% of all cases of hepatocellular carcinoma (liver cancer) worldwide, second only to tobacco among known human carcinogens. […]
One should not judge by appearance: most infected people look perfectly healthy and have no symptoms of disease, yet may be highly infectious.
As Australia’s population changes rapidly through immigration and we travel more readily our risk of HBV infection steadily increases. At no time in our history has vaccination against HBV been more important. This will be true tomorrow, next week, next year and next decade. For this reason HBV vaccination is available to newborns.
It’s safe to say that everyday in Australia new lives not only begin, but are in many cases saved and protected from infection through this initiative. In the USA at least eight people per day die from HBV related complications. 25% of carriers world wide – over one million people – die each year from chronic hepatic insufficiency, cirrhosis and liver cancer brought on by HBV infection.
The protective effect of vaccination rolls on for newborns, toddlers and children. Children not born to a HBV positive mother are still protected from the many modes of infection as they grow and go about their lives. There are more concerns than sexual behaviour or the sterility of drug administration. Blood borne is invisible. Only a tiny scratch or cut to the skin or oral mucosa is enough to allow the HBV virus to infect.
It can remain viable for up to a week in blood stains on razor blades, nail clippers, nail files, table tops and can be transferred to a tiny wound by moistening dried, viable blood stains on bedding. We can extrapolate from that to see potential risk comes from any sharp surface or object or textile that children play with and chew on.
It would appear that if complacency was to be justified it is in the parents whose children are vaccinated at birth.
Fortunately antivaccination lobbying and planned fear mongering is not the global norm. At the same time we can celebrate the truly life changing roll out of Hepatitis B vaccination in China.
In 2004 The Association for Asia Research reported 690 million people in China were infected with HBV:
According to the Xinhua News Agency, April 25 is Children’s Immunization Day in China. China’s health department has named this day with the theme of “vaccination prevents hepatitis B” this year. They want to draw the public’s attention to the importance of vaccinating children for hepatitis B vaccination to stop further spread of the disease in China.
A recent study showed that about 2 billion people in the world are infected with hepatitis B; 690 million of them live in China. The chronic hepatitis B carriers in China number about 20 million. An average of 280,000 deaths annually are caused by hepatitis B and related liver diseases.
Still today in China HBV infection carries stigma much like HIV which, in what should be a wake up to Australian and USA antivaccination mobs, prevents middle and upper class individuals from seeking blood tests. Despite HIV awareness being much greater, as recently as 2007 the HIV to HBV infection ratio in China was 1 to 200.
In 2005 the GAVI Alliance began to work with Chinese officials in combating HBV through the vaccination of newborns. GAVI had already made significant inroads in developing nations. In 2004, 22 years after HBV vaccination was introduced to Italy, 50% of low income nations had included the vaccine in immunisation schedules.
What’s truly impressive about GAVI’s impact, is that this was only six years after the 50% mark was reached for high income countries. Over 75% of that catch up followed the launch of GAVI.
In 2001 10% of China’s population were chronic carriers of HBV, which was responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths from cirrhosis and liver cancer annually. In 2004 this was estimated to be 280,000 deaths. Less than 40% of children in poor areas were being immunised.
In 2002 the Chinese Centre for Disease Control, the Chinese Government and GAVI formed a partnership to co-fund HBV vaccines. This lasted until the end of 2010 and produced a concerted effort to fight infection. Over 25 million newborns in remote and poor regions of western and central China were given free HBV vaccines.
As many women traditionally gave birth at home, raising awareness as to the value of immunisation and encouraging mothers to give birth in hospital became a crucial part of the programme.
In 2005 the Chinese government added HBV vaccines to the national immunisation schedule. At the beginning of the project 64% of children were immunised with the first dose at birth. Now this level is over 90% in the majority of these remote regions. Today, less than 1% of children aged under 5 are carriers of HBV.
Dr Mark Kane, a GAVI Alliance founding Board member states:
The success of the introduction of hepatitis B vaccine is a model, showing us what we need to do and what can happen as we embark on efforts to introduce important new vaccines against pneumonia, diarrhoea and cervical cancer.
China remains a country where vaccines are not a victim of their success. 25 million newborns have been given a start in life that many of their parents could only dream of. Australia’s most vocal antivaccination identity claims Chinese herbal medicine has been shown “to clear Hep B from the system… there are peer reviewed studies on this”.
It appears the Chinese themselves would, and can, disagree without saying a word. There is no cure. The virus can and does clear of it’s own accord in some cases, which might easily be the subject of poorly controlled studies.
However the ravages of Hepatitis B infection in China is a matter of recorded history. I wish them all the best for the future.
Because after all as we can see yet again, vaccination saves lives.
Adult immunisations are crucial to maintaining the chain of protection against infectious disease.
Video presented by Professor Robert Booy, Immunisation and Infectious Diseases Expert, The Children’s Hospital Westmead, The University of Sydney, NCIRS.
The Weak Link: Adult Immunisations from Chain of Protection on Vimeo.
In an upcoming work defending the Australian Vaccination Network it is postulated that Denial Of Service attacks might be a tactic used by critics of the AVN.
This ever expanding list of “attacks” dreamed up by Meryl Dorey already includes causing Meryl’s ISP to experience a mysterious outage, having the Age of Autism’s Facebook page pulled, causing problems with the AVN website and attacking the site of a Living Wisdom advertiser. There are many but most reflect a variation on these.
In reality the suggestion that DOS was perhaps perpetrated by Stop The AVN with no evidence of this even occurring is indicative of the gulf between Ms. Dorey’s accusations and backing them with evidence. Equally, suggesting her critics have the means (or cause) to anonymously attack her ISP and Facebook, then squander such a coup on Age of Autism, is the stuff of conspiracy central concoctions.
The issue of the Living Wisdom advertiser – who probably wonders where the heck his advertisements are – is worth retelling. Members of SAVN became aware Ms. Dorey was accusing critics of having “hacked” this advertiser’s site. On examination it turned out the CSS file was not styling the site. If I remember, the index file and CSS file weren’t chatting. Ergo, a slight coding problem.
As it turned out, two AVN critics contacted the advertiser and happily fixed the problem for him. This entailed some degree of trust which clearly was not abused. Tally? Meryl rips him off for paid ads she never published. Stop AVN fix his site problems for free, but Meryl lies about it claiming SAVN “hacked” his site. Strangely, this “attack” has never been cleared up by AVN members with a dash of truth.
Poor SAVN is also accused of giving the AVN a poor WoT rating. Yet a quick visit to the AVN Facebook page shows a whopping 4,596 Likes. Fascinating for a page with about 10 – 15 active posters. Aside from scamming her own members out of approximately $180,000 in magazine subscriptions this figure gives you an indication of how many genuine parents, natural therapists and others have been accused of trolling. Posts deleted, access banned.
The same can be said for the AVN website. These are genuine issues of trust and vendor reliability. Genuine concerns that are raised about the safety of refusing all vaccines are never allowed. All censored by the AVN. The AVN have strayed very, very far from representing parents with concerns about vaccination. Perhaps the AVN should look further afield for who might rate them as shifty and dangerous.
Recently on AVN Facebook a desire to discuss the pros and cons of current policy was met with deletion, banning and accusation of trolling. In defence the AVN runs the mantra that the page is for AVN fans only. Which by extension means healthy discourse or independence is not tolerated by AVN in-groupies. Check this out-take from a thread, starting Saturday June 16th.
Oh yes of course. No way could they be genuinely interested visitors seeking to respond to the issue raised. That would be too logical.
It’s pretty messed up stuff. Either you ignore best practice and evidence in health, or you’re a troll and a paid Big Pharma shill. Yet the AVN is not anti-vaccination but pro-choice, we hear over and again.
Recently some genuinely childish attacks were made against this site and reasonablehank. A silly old meanie had gone and reported our URL’s to Trend Micro as dangerous, facilitating distribution of spam, malicious source code and software.
Trend Micro being none too clever don’t bother to check the site but do change the rating on their “safety page”. This changes how Trend Micro software reacts to URL’s. Someone had noticed;
“Dangerous, Verified fraudulent page or threat source”. Pathetic Trend Micro and a well known problem. This is a WordPress blog (as in, on their server) forbidding even JavaScript, Flash and HTML embed code for media or active widgets such as a trendy countdown clock. They are meticulous when it comes to ensuring safe sites. Suffice it to say Trend Micro is open to abuse. So I checked on my URL to find:
Dangerous! Malicious! Oh, how delicious! Visions of computer viruses flooded my head. If nothing else, at that moment I had a new term for unvaccinated children: Malicious. As in, “when will they test the health of vaccinated vs malicious children?” Oh, the LULZ dear reader, the LULZ.
The national childhood Immunisation Register would change to “Fully Vaccinated”, “Malicious (DANGER)”, “Unknown”, “Partly vaccinated”. The darlings could have T-Shirts at creche with big red crosses and DANGEROUS on front and back.
Novelty shops would sell DANGER: Malicious Child On Board badges for cars. Houses would need signs. DANGER! Latest tests show malicious children inside could infect visitors! Or UNSAFE PROPERTY! Please ensure your antivirus boosters are up to date. Schoolchildren could be scanned for Malicious blood types, with rating dependent upon antibodies for different VPD’s.
You should read Hank’s account of how our friend Liz above accused him of trying to infect her computer, when she got a similar warning. She was, er, trolling his site and got a fright. Then switched computers (and in the process antivirus programme) or went mobile which led to even more confusion and accusation about infecting certain IP addresses.
Liz might be happy to expose her child and innocent community members to potential viral infection but any suspicion over infecting a computer and you’re “involved in criminal activities”. But things were about to get funnier.
What with all this trolling AVN is subject to, and censorship of their pages it was hard to miss Liz trolling Dan’s Journal of Skepticism on this very issue. If that wasn’t enough Liz was also scanning for censorship:
Anyway, I’m pleased to report all is back to normal thanks to informing Trend Micro of this silly business.
The AVN ban, censor and cry troll. Their members troll, cry censorship, abuse and accuse. Meanwhile my money from Big Pharma still hasn’t turned up.
I bet Trend Micro are to blame.
Paul; your writings are amusing, but you have only 183 followers! My 14 year old daughter has three times that on a silly facebook page!
In the spirit of genuine laziness and as one of the “waspish witch-hunters of political medicine”, I’ve reproduced my response to a comment on the About page written by a giant in the art of selective topic pertinence.
Keith. Mate!
Your daughter has a bigger number than mine. On Facebook! Well, I’m sure that every one is a dedicated and true friend engaged in a deeply meaningful personal relationship. Or… maybe quality isn’t what matters, if I’m to take the meaning.
Yes I agree chiropractic will be around for years to come. Chiropractors will tweak and change to keep in line with shifts in superstition and trends in gullibility to ensure they maintain a large slice of the health scam market. They will also fight and defend like skilled con artists and fraudsters to hold onto the empty title of “doctor”, being only too aware of the psychology that drives the gullible to their doors. Mimicry of actual medicine and misuse of technology is vital to the illusion.
Also I agree on the history. Palmer certainly wasn’t the first person to rattle and dance, poke and prod whilst intoning godly laws about the human body and human health. He was however the first to market his touchy brand of magic as “science” and made liberal use of the most modern tools at his disposal.
I note your journey to last century to exhume the Wilk case. A splendid diversion. Yet since then, not only was your daughter born but chiropractic shifted into a fundamentalist ideology that denies every rule of medical science and the very laws of nature itself. Of its own accord it has become the “go to discipline” for glowing appraisals of alternatives to medicine and solemn condemnation of conventional medicine.
More so, it has again of its own accord inserted itself in serious health debates way beyond the beliefs ensconced behind the battlements of its extra-dimensional reality. The vaccination issue. Pre natal, neo natal and extended post natal proclamations designed solely to scare vulnerable and gullible new parents to sign those lucrative “treatment contracts”. Paediatric chiropractic – perhaps more amusing than you realise if not for the conclusive demonstrations of inefficacy.
To my knowledge the only scheme to actually provoke symptoms of Munchausens Syndrome By Proxy it is responsible for creating nervous wrecks and genuine psychological patients of innocent parents. The invention of “syndrome” after “syndrome” and the terrifying warnings of what awaits those who do not succumb to regular “maintenance”.
However as we read in Quacks galore in facade of quirky medicine:
SCIENTISTS spent $374,000 recently asking people to inhale lemon and lavender scents to see if it helped their wounds to heal. It didn’t.
The National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the US also outlaid $700,000 to show that magnets are no help in treating arthritis, carpal tunnel syndrome or migraines.
The centre spent $390,000 to find that old Indian herbal remedies do not control type 2 diabetes and $406,000 to prove coffee enemas do not cure pancreatic cancer.
It’s the same story around the globe. One by one, weirdo treatments are being exposed as bunkum.
Why are people so gullible, handing over their hard-earned cash for unproven alternative therapies? […]
Latest research says dietary supplements and megavitamins, acupuncture and chiropractic are of little use – and may even be harmful. […]
Chiropractors have now been discredited by every reputable medical organisation from the Royal Society down, yet people still spend up on these bone-crunchers and state and federal governments seem unwilling to shut them down.
Recently I reported on two experts on alternative medicine who reviewed all the evidence and concluded chiropractic was “worthless”.
“Harmful, worthless, discredited by every reputable medical organisation from the Royal Society down”. Keith, mate! And that’s coming from proponents of alternatives to medicine.
Like all magical claims chiropractic has been sternly examined and found wanting. Claims of efficacy crushed under the simple application of RCTs and its claims of safety evaporate before a monumental collection of research into death, permanent injury and disability or injury and complications with frequent cases of lengthy recovery. To be sure this happens in medicine also but to those already on death’s doorstep, significantly ill, disabled or in need of life saving surgery. And they are well informed of the risks that apply to a strictly evidence based choice.
That chiropractors scheme and trick people who are absolutely perfectly healthy – indeed many fatalities in robust health, the prime of life – to believe they need attention is itself a grave insult to common altruism and a thunderously immoral application of psychology. That healthy and vital people can be killed or injured and experience levels of morbidity that equal high impact vehicle accidents is a statement about chiropractic no-one can ignore.
Again addressing your mine’s bigger than yours argument I note the “fast-dwindling group of activists” reference. Of course nothing could be more inaccurate. Advocacy for science based medicine and skeptical defence and examination of consumer rights in health and beyond, is at an all time high. But it is not quantity that matters, and your obsession with quantity reveals your lack of appreciation for quality.
It is evidence that matters. Including evidence explaining what drives the interest in so many health scams we have seen rise up of late. The search for Truth is indeed vital, but skeptics and other scientists will accept the evidence as it comes. This happens to include that which explains the manipulation of individuals to believe the equivalent of magic is fact. Should the evidence indicate an increase in the future this too will be sought for further elucidation.
To comment on evidence gleaned from the methods that can be trusted to inform us of our world is not to be waging war. Much less a “self created turf war” as you put it. Of course people will continue to believe in fallacy and illusion. Magic has been a feature of our species for countless thousands of years, yet today we can discern the mechanics by which false displays are executed and the primary role of the believer themselves.
Many things will persist with health scams. Wars, cults, belief in the supernatural and our disposition to internalise superstitious belief to name a few. People are hard wired to believe in fantasy. Yet in a democracy I would not have it any other way for it reflects on my freedom. Your real concern should be with a.) the lack of evidence for chiropractic and b.) the ultimate goal of regulators.
Seeking to impede exploitation of fellow community members when evidence irrefutably confirms this, is the democratic right of skeptics and science advocates. When perpetrators of scams confirm malignant intent by misrepresenting evidence it becomes a moral obligation – a duty to our species.
Of course, with real freedom we find expression and belief should not be inhibited. In this light the freedom to be stupid is your democratic right.
I too have found great amusement in this exchange.
I fear however, your return to the lives of schoolgirls on Facebook is perhaps well justified.
Here’s lookin’ at ya Keith.
